Los Angeles, California Remarks to the National Education Association.

President McGuire, Vice President Freitag, Secretary/Treasurer McGarigal, Terry Herndon, my good friend ex-President John Ryor, distinguished members of the selection committee—who I think did a very good job and whom I want to thank personally:

What a tremendous crowd this is. [Applause] Thank you very much. I might say that it's also a very fine experience for me to be here with my good partners. It's a tribute to the strength of NEA that this is one of the few places in the whole Nation that's big enough to hold you. And I .would like to bring to you the good wishes of another excellent friend of NEA. You know him well; you've heard him speak many times; you've even shown the extra exhibition of friendship by laughing at his jokes—I'm talking about one of the finest Vice Presidents this Nation has ever seen, Fritz Mondale.

I might say something that you already know, and that is that both the President and the Vice President of our great country consider that we are part of the NEA, and I'm very deeply proud to accept the "Friend of Education" award. It's remarkable that someone who has served 3¼ years as President, and before that served 7 years on a local school board, could have this much support from teachers, and I deeply appreciate that as well.

I'm also proud because you represent America at its very best. The heart of our democracy, as you well know, is universal, strong, free, public education, and the heart of that system— [applause] and the heart of that education system is the teacher. The simple truth is that the more complex and difficult our national issues become, the more valuable to America is an educated public.

When we began our partnership in 1977—as a matter of fact, we actually began our partnership about a year earlier-we had gone through two administrations that were hostile to the .American education programs that you worked so hard over the last number of years to enact. The result of this was an actual decline, in real terms, in support of education, during 8 years of serious and growing need.

A quick look at the record will be very helpful to us. I would like to look at the facts with you. Working together, you and I have reversed that downward trend. Compared to the budget proposal which I inherited when I was inaugurated as President in 1977—and which I immediately changed—the 1981 budget will have increased Federal funds for education by 73 percent. We've had some good administrations in Washington in the past, but this is the greatest increase in any such period in the history of our Nation, and we're not through yet.

And equally important, and as you also know, we have concentrated our efforts on those who are most in need, those who are not often treated fairly or equitably because of economic or social problems, at the lower levels of government.

We've increased title I by 55 percent. For the handicapped Americans, we have tripled State grants. For bilingual education, we have doubled funding. And throughout the country, we've established centers where teachers can upgrade their skills. With expanded college aid for middle-income families, as well as for impoverished students, overall student aid has more than doubled. And now for the first time in the history of our Nation, there is no need for any young person in America to miss a college education because of financial reasons.

And as Willard McGuire has already mentioned, there is now a chair in the Cabinet Room next to the Oval Office, and it's marked on it, "Secretary of Education." And we have a distinguished Californian who sits there, Secretary Shirley Hufstedler. Later on she'll be addressing this convention, and she'll go into more detail about specific programs on which we will be cooperating in the months and years ahead. But from now on, education will have a strong voice at every Cabinet meeting. The children, the parents, and the teachers of America will be well represented, and you can depend on that.

You and I have worked as partners in the full knowledge that if we fail, so does the basic ideal of our country—the ideal of equal opportunity and the ideal of enlightened democracy. In the last decade schools have reeked the whirlwind of public discontent and social unrest. Many people blame teachers for this discontent and unrest, and they expect the schools to solve problems where sometimes all other institutions have failed.

In the most important, constructive social change of our lifetimes, the elimination of legal and de facto discrimination in our schools, the churches failed, the courts failed, the Congress failed, local and State officials failed, the communities failed, and who succeeded?—the teachers of this country, and I thank you for it.

At the same time, all our people in this country, including you and me, are rightly concerned that many of our children do not yet learn to read and write, that schools and classrooms are sometimes disorderly, that good teachers are becoming disenchanted, and that administration of our schools is often haphazard and wasteful. Whatever the reasons— [applause] —I was interested in seeing when you would applaud on that line. [Laughter] Whatever the reasons for these acknowledged problems, the answer does not lie in dismantling Federal programs, in taxpayer revolts, or in chastising the teachers in the classroom. The answer lies in more and better education, not only as a commitment to our children but as a commitment to our Nation.

We've heard many times, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." No nation can afford this waste, and the United States, as powerful as it is, is no exception to this rule. We must meld together more closely the classroom and a life's career, and particularly among the poor and the destitute and the deprived and the ignored and the suffering and those who suffer discrimination, the young Americans as they approach adulthood.

That's why I've submitted to the Congress this year a $2-billion drive to establish a permanent youth employment program. This will bring the total to $6 billion for an effort that enlists educators and others in providing basic skills and jobs to the disadvantaged young people. That legislation is making good progress, but I need the help of every member of NEA and all friends of education in getting it passed through the Congress.

We are also preparing for the reauthorization of the Vocational Education Act in the next Congress.

As we look further into the decade, we must prepare our children for a world that is barely imaginable today, for a world changing so rapidly that it will tax the best trained minds and the most courageous and daring people.

We face great challenges—not yet easy to understand or predict—in energy, in health, in agriculture, in national security, in science, in the quest for peace, in economic innovation, in productivity, and we will face even greater challenges in the next century.

It's surprising to realize that children born this year will come of age in the 21st century. A child will not be ready for life if there is no chance to learn the eternal truths of science, history, the humanities, how to relate to other human beings in the same community.

It's possible that our country may not be ready. I'm concerned, for example, that almost one-sixth of our high school students are all that take courses necessary to pursue science and engineering degrees in college; the other five-sixths do not. Only half ever go beyond the 10th grade geometry or biology in high school. Every year, fewer and fewer students learn a foreign language. At the same time that our farms, factories, and national defense require an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of these skills, our children get even less training in those technical subjects. That not only forecloses tremendous opportunities for them in the future, it also weakens the economic and the international status and the security of our Nation.

Equally important, in a world that is increasingly interdependent and when exports have become so critical to our economic health, our young people have less foreign language capacity than they did 10 years ago. Our schools are deemphasizing foreign language studies. All of these trends must be reversed.

I'm also concerned about working conditions for teachers, and I'm concerned about the fundamental role of collective bargaining. As I've said before, and I'd like to repeat, the quality of education depends first and foremost on the morale and the effectiveness of the classroom teacher.

I've authorized an interagency study, that will report to me, of how teachers' salaries and conditions affect the quality of education and what governments can do in a proper and legitimate way, at all levels, so that we can have constructive alternatives to strikes and to work stoppages by meeting the legitimate needs and requirements of the teachers of this country.

I'm also determined that in a special way, our Nation will give outstanding classroom teachers recognition for their long struggle, often unrecognized, to educate our children. I'm sending to the Congress a small bill, legislation that will create the national distinguished teachers fellowships. They'll be rewarded, a few teachers, with an award going to one elementary teacher and one high school teacher in each one of our States and territories, to reward excellence in teaching.

In summary, I'd like to say that for the last 3 1/2 years we've worked for education programs to give even the poorest child the chance to learn, a chance to dream, a chance to succeed. We've worked for programs that prepare our young people and our Nation for the great challenges that we face in this century and in the century not too far away.

The 1980's will be a decade of fundamental choices. Our partnership on national issues will be even more important in the future than it has been in the past. For example, it's a tragedy that after 2 years—two centuries of struggle for more democracy in our country, we have not guaranteed the equal rights of one half the citizens of this Nation. More than any other single organization in this country, the NEA, year after year, has championed that simple matter of equity. And I renew my pledge to you that we will keep the faith, and we will ratify the equal rights amendment for this country.

It's obvious that we do stand together for the ERA as we have stood together for many other vital issues. When I needed your help on energy legislation, you were with me, and we finally turned the corner on the energy problem. Oil imports are down 1 million barrels per day below what they were a year ago, and they're down a million and a half barrels a day compared to when I took office. In the past we had had a constant upward trend, and the importance of this change is hard to overestimate. We now have a place on the law books of our country being filled with the first energy policy for our Nation that can guarantee our Nation's security in energy.

When I needed your help on the SALT treaty, you were there; for consumers, you were there; for the poor and the elderly and for better communities, for stronger families, you were there; for civil service reform, you were there; for fairer housing legislation, you were there. On issue after issue, win, sometimes lose, you were with me. In every case, the NEA was on the side of hope. The NEA was on the side of progress. The NEA was on the side of human rights. The NEA was on the side of peace.

You've made it possible for this country under the most difficult possible circumstances to face up to the challenges that have been pushed aside for so many years. And as we have faced up to the present, to the world as it is, we are resolute in the realization that you and I, together, all the teachers of this land, are building a better country for the future.

We've not always looked at the future. We've rightly looked at the past for traditional values in our family and personal life. But we cannot allow nostalgia built on an incorrect memory to blind us to what life was like when government did nothing to project minorities, the working people, or the poor; when disease and ignorance and prejudice took a fearful toil; when only 70 years ago, only half of America's school-age children had a chance to go to school. We still face difficult times together. We cannot wish away or promise away America's problems.

The most recent example of the simplistic approach to serious issues, one that I'm having to fight every day in Washington, is the effort now in Congress to stick onto totally unrelated bills, without any public hearings, proposals which would lead to a 30-percent across-the-board tax cut over the next 3 years. By 1985, this would cost us $280 billion annually. It would reward the wealthy. It would mean a wholesale retreat from the painful progress that we've made over the last several months to reduce inflation and reduce interest rates. It is sheer deception to promise the American people that we can have this enormously expensive and unfair tax cut, that we can dramatically increase defense expenditures even above and beyond the substantial levels I've recommended, and that we can sustain our programs in education, employment, health, and other areas, and that we can exercise budget restraint at the same time.

You all know that this kind of hasty offer can only be called by one word, and that's irresponsible. And we will not stand for it. It's a classic offer in a political year of a free lunch, something for nothing. The American people know better. They know, as Walter Lippmann reminded us, that there is nothing for nothing any longer. The American people know that our challenges are not simple; they are complex. The American people know that the solutions are not simple or painless or easy. The American people will support honest, constructive ideas, steady commitments, and hard work to achieve social and economic justice for our country. It's the only way we have ever made progress, it's by determination and tenacity and courage and hard work and unity and cooperation and telling the truth.

And I call on you today to reaffirm our joint commitment to the realization of our principles, which we share in action. We must choose in this decade a new partnership of government and the private sector that builds for the future. We can only do this if we invest heavily in our most precious possession, our human capital, through education.

In you, the members of NEA, I see the spirit of building, the spirit of pulling together. I see a renewal of our dedication to children and to their education. I see our capacity and the opportunity for lasting solutions to even our most serious and difficult problems. When later generations look back, I want them to see us, you and me, as the people who did build for the future and who left as a legacy, a strong education system in a strong and great nation. Together, we will realize that dream.

Thank you very much.